So I have been on the hunt fr the best deals while not compromising my first swaray into AP. I found an awesome price for a non gemini GM-8. My budget stipulates one or the other, not both... So it is either I go with a rough loud GOTO LXD75 with SV102ED or I go with the beautiful smooth QUIET but non GOTO GM-8? As I mentioned this will be for AP, so the GOTO and it's cheap price are really intriguing, but the rugidness of the GM-8 has me thinking that will be my mount for MANY years to come. So what say you ladies & gents? I need to move on one of these very soon as they are both incredible deals! Thanks and clear skies everyone.

The Losmandy non-Gemini mounts are among the most trouble-free units in contemporary amateur astronomy. There are a number of upgrade possibilities: at some point you can save your nickels and put a gemini unit on, and also you can upgrade to the Ovision worm.

However, a word of advice on that score. Although your refractor won't be hugely demanding with regard to PE control, the fact is that for any given level of accuracy on a G8, you will get twice the accuracy, with the same worm, on a G11. The reason is that the worm wheel (the teeth on the fat part of the mount) has twice as many teeth on the G11 (360) as opposed to the g8 (180).

The penny wise decision in my view is a g11 stepper version, possibly bought used for $1700 or thereabouts, or new for around $2100. People have gotten under 5 arc secodns peak to peak with the Ovision $500 upgrade and at some point if you really want to control the mount from your laptop you can throw on a gemini unit which will cost a pretty penny. But you don't need it while you are getting your feet wet, and can defer that expense to some later day.

The LXD 75 just isn't in the same league. You'll save a lot of money but in the end probably wish you hadn't.